Truly Existing: Finding Someone
by Musicalrain
Summary: There's something dark in the woods between Lothering and the Brecilian Wood, and Sloane Tabris is determined to put a stop to the atrocities he finds. Stand alone companion piece to my fic Truly Existing. Written for NaNoWriMo. Rated T for violence and language. M!Tabris.


**Truly Existing: Finding Someone**

_A/N: Winner of my NaNoWriMo poll for my fic, Truly Existing, is the story of when Sloane Tabris first finds the protagonist, Karie, from his POV. This is that story. You needn't have read Truly Existing to understand this story, however, since this could be taken as a prelude to the fic itself. Enjoy!_

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><p>By the Maker's bloody socks, now that Alistair's come out of his self-imposed bought of silence, I could really do with a little quiet. My whole being's far from quiet itself. There's this foreign feeling of urgency pounding through my veins in a rhythm synchronized with the beating of my heart. It's a thrumming sensation crawling through my muscles with an icy edge, one that's reminding me that this unfamiliar edge has a purpose. I know it that this cold thrum signifies the comings and goings of the darkspawn, or so I was told by my predecessor Duncan. I can damn well feel those blasted creatures as if my whole body has become attuned to their essence. Void take it, but Grey Wardens truly feel this every moment of their waking lives? Or is this just something that comes about during a Blight? I should really ask my fellow, come to think of it. His mouth has been running like a skiff without a paddle. Let's pray he'd be open to shedding some light on our shared plight.<p>

"Alistair, may I have a word?" I ask while I slow my steps to come to walking beside he and the Lay Sister we'd taken on, or rather I'd agreed to let on. Alistair's leaving the leading of things to me when he's the senior in rank. Hardly proper protocol for such things, but if the shem's not willing to do what's necessary, I'll take on that mantle. Not gladly, mind you, but I'll not gripe about it. Duncan was a friend of Mother's, and I'll not let his legacy, what he'd fought and died for, be lost to the wind due to one man's inability to adhere to his duty as he should. The former Warden-Commander deserves more. Ferelden deserves more. There's a Blight on, and personal preferences are the least of what's to be sacrificed because of it.

The human turns nosily towards me in his heavy mail armor and further from Sister Leliana with whom he was discussing the state of the local Chantry's library with to grace me with his complete attention. "This sensing of darkspawn we Wardens possess," I continue after a moment, "is it permanent, or does it subside?"

He shivers as if my mere speaking of the sensations we both share due to our respective Joining rituals brings about the thrumming's intensity, "There's darkspawn crawling all over these woods," he looks around to emphasize his statement before returning his attention to me. "But to answer your question, no. I've gone days without feeling it, but at night you do. If you're not around the 'spawn there's no sensing of them while you're awake, but with the Blight... there's so many of them..." he trails off with his eyes glazed over in either thought or memory before he blinks at me, "You'll get used to it."

"Bloody fantastic," I snort. "Just what I need, the feeling of darkspawn crawling all over my naked skin every waking moment because of this Taint," I grumble sourly before I remember myself. This is unlike me. I could see the frown on Mother's face if she'd heard my slander, though indirect, of the Wardens. She never joined the Order. Couldn't, what with a family having little ones including her own child and an orphaned niece and nephew to look after. There was simply too much risk in that, especially since her time as a Night Elf had come and gone with the end of the Occupation. The Wardens are an eclectic lot with a death wish, and I know that quite well. Helping with training and low-priority missions was all Mother could do for the people she'd befriended, and came to rely on for a steady income. Mother was a Grey Warden at heart, and she'd taught us - Soris, Shianni, and I - to respect all they are. Even after Mother died, I'd never lost faith in what she stood for, what the Wardens stand for. "I apologize, Alistair," I say to the human while I straighten my spine betraying my shame at my choice in words in my stance and expression. "I trust that you are right, that I will simply need time to adjust." I sigh and shake my head in a physical effort to rid myself of the foreign thoughts and feelings thrust upon me due to our present situation. I shain't allow myself any more outbursts. I can control myself better than this.

"Don't worry about it," he says with an attempt to smile, though he is still quite depressed over what had happened at Ostagar and it shows in the gesture. I'd be lying if I'd said I wasn't affected by it all. I'd known some of those blokes since I was in nappies. Though I'd hadn't known Alistair prior to Ostagar, since I believe he was recruited around the time I'd removed myself from fancies of fighting for a righteous cause and other ideas of grandeur. I'd obeyed my father's wishes. I had thrust myself in preparing for my impeding... wedding. Maker, but there's so much I'd failed at. I can still see Nesiara's blood-stained face if I close my eyes long enough. I won't fail in this, stopping this Blight. I can't allow myself to.

"Alistair," I address my fellow again in an attempt to soothe his disquiet and perhaps forge the path for the bonds of brotherhood to be formed. "Have I told you of my history with the Wardens?"

He blinks dumbly down at me, "You have a history with the Wardens?" he parrots in question.

I feel the beginnings of a smirk pulling at the corners of my lips while I answer his question. "Oh, nothing of any spectacular sort. Though I will admit to thoroughly have enjoyed pulling the wool over Gregor's eyes every now an then. But my mother, perhaps you heard of her, she was a companion of the Grey Wardens and assisted in training and the like for roughly two decades. She'd bring me and my cousins to the Warden's hold every now and again. I'd known the others well," I admit as a near afterthought.

"Oh," I watch as he frowns a bit in thought. "I'd heard mention of an elven woman, not a Warden, who'd help train recruits when I was one. Didn't think too much about it at the time." He frowns some more while scrubbing a hand across the stubble on his jaw, "I'm sorry... I've been so... and I didn't know you'd..."

I slap him on the back of the shoulder companionably and rest my hand there while I say, "Don't let it weigh you down, Alistair. I understand. Duncan was a good man, and we're fortunate to have known him. Perhaps once we've conquered this Blight in his memory, we can do something to honor him afterwards. Something like lighting a symbolic pyre for he and the others. It could do us all a world of good to put their souls to rest properly."

He nods his head along with my words, "That sounds great." He sucks in a breath between his teeth, "Thank you."

I nod my head in turn and release his shoulder while turning to face forward along the winding trail the dwarven merchant in our company led us to on our way to the Brecilian wood. I spy something out of the very corner of my vision, and I turn my head more fully to look at it. I see it - it's blood. I stop in my tracks with my heart briefly picking up at the grisly sight, before I march over towards the side of the trail where it lays. So much blood. I reach out with one hand and swipe my bare fingers on the low hanging branch of a tree which is covered in the ruddy substance. "This blood is still wet," I turn towards the others, some of which had stopped to examine what had caught my attention, while I swipe the semi-viscus liquid over the tips of my fingers. I look down and examine what else is evidenced by whatever happened here. Low shrubbery is either broken or trampled, and there's blood muddying the tracks left in the earth. Some of the tracks are large, some small, but none of the evidence holds the dark ichor associated with the taint of the darkspawn. The thrum in my skin isn't drumming, but my blood is. This was done by someone, not darkspawn, but perhaps more bandits or their ilk. Maybe even associates of the ones we'd disposed of prior to entering the village of Lothering. More people preying on the weak and desperate. My jaw clenches in righteous anger while I turn to more fully address my meager companions, all we've yet gathered to aid us in stopping this blasted Blight. "This wasn't darkspawn," I explain the change in my demeanor, "There may be more bandits in this area, in these woods."

"And by that you intend for us to seek them out," Morrigan says with a scrunch of her nose. "'Twould be a waste of time. The injured would be but a mere corpse by now." The apostate is so provocatively dressed, so aesthetically beautiful, yet so ugly in the depths of her mind and soul. I'd been able to discover that early on, and if not for our debts to her mother, I would've hesitated in letting her join our company - at least more than I have.

I shake my head shortly at her, "I'd still look. We should prevent the deaths of any more from unsavory lots, if we can, darkspawn or no. It's our duty as capable, caring," I emphasize that word while holding the witch's yellowed gaze, "individuals."

"I agree with you, Warden Sloane" Leliana, the Orlesian Lay Sister interjects calmly in that placid, yet melodious tone of hers, "We are making good time. We could spare a moment to do the Maker's good work."

I nod my head and turn back 'round while the dwarven man in our group offers to stay behind with his son. Randall, the mabari I'd never thought I'd be so much as lucky to have, nudges his broad head under my hand before putting his dark snout to the earthen floor and taking off down the trail of destruction and further into the thicket of trees and brambles. What we come across mere minutes from the dirt trail we had set off on, is, well simply put, not what I'd thought we'd find. There's a cabin, though that's being generous with the word. This shack of split tree-trunks is adorned with dessicated corpses of all kinds. What must be the freshest of the deceased, the one whose small footsteps I'd spied in the bloody mud, is a girl with her neck split wide and hanging from a rope by the ankle with her feet towards the sky like a pig to slaughter. There's a pail beneath her bloodied face collecting her life's essence that is still flowing in small rivulets from her life-rending wound.

"What sort of madness is this?" I breathe between my teeth while I hear a barely audible hiss of breath come from the Chantry woman whose light-footed steps had caught up to mine. I watch as she covers her eyes briefly with one pale hand before looking towards this cabin decorated with bone and corpses hung from the surrounding trees like sickened versions of garland on Satinalia. Morrigan emerges seamlessly from the trees just as the warriors of our group, Alistair and the large Qunari Sten, come to a noisy stop beside us. The looks we all share signify our shared thoughts - the one behind this must die. These atrocious acts against life itself must be put to an end. Whoever has done this is just as dark and twisted and the Void damned darkspawn themselves. May the Maker burn them all in a pit for eternity and more, and may we give Him a helping hand. I slide my hardened leather cap from its place hanging on my belt to fix it to the top of my head before I slide my fingers against the familiar worn leather of my twin daggers' were one of many Mother owned, but my favored by far. Fitting that I would draw on Mother's goodness and sense of justice symbolized in her own blades to put an end to the twisted acts done here. I'd be damned that I'd do nothing to put an end to this, whether as a Grey Warden or not, after having seen just a piece of what I'm sure is many horrendous acts. "Let's make this quick," I tell the others with a quick look around and a flick of my wrists to slide the tempered steel of my blades free from their scabbards with a barely audible sound of the metal.

Firmly holding my blades in my curled fists, I step lightly through the vegetation and gore - chunks of decaying, rotting flesh and foetid shards of bone and entrails - to make my way to the side of the cabin. Sten takes the initiative in barreling through the singular door with a modicum of finesse all the while hollering a war-cry in the Qunari language at the top of his lungs. Following behind, I enter into a large space painted in blood to see three human men scrambling away from a table laden with bowls of carrion strewn across the surface and their hands.

"Blood mages!" Alistair bellows from behind just as our blades alight in a tempered flame gifted from one of Morrigan's spells. The witch had used it once before to bolster our collective destructive abilities, and I'm glad for it when one of those men, a bastard inked in crude designs upon his paled flesh, sends a pulse of invisible magic our way that rocks the dirt of the floor beneath our feet. I stagger and struggle to remain standing, and when my boots find enough purchase, I'm off with the speed afforded to me by my elven ancestors.

The first man I come to, a hairsuite man that could do with a bath or two, I stab at with my blade pointed upwards and angled at his ribs while avoiding a retaliation in the form of a magic-laced fist. The flaming steel slides through the forgiving tissue as easily as one would slice bread. I force the pommel up and consequentially the blade downwards with a grunt for my efforts and a loud crunch of my opponent's bone while his own life's essence begins to spill free from his cavity. The man doesn't even gasp in pain, but simply looks at me with unnaturally red-lighted eyes while a painful burning sensation flicks down my spine. The suddenness of the pain, the scorching heat of it, makes me double over and release my blade from his side. The metal falls to the floor while I struggle to fill my lungs with enough breath. "Damnation!" I curse loudly when the stamina afforded to me from my Joining pulses through my body with sudden strength, and I stand with a grace and agility that would make Mother proud before I sink the metal held in my off-hand deep into the bastard's neck. I butcher the flesh violently on the withdraw, and look on with disgust held strongly in my soul while the man's eyes flash brilliantly red before he falls into a lifeless heap upon the floor.

I turn quickly at an unnatural scream when one man, the bald one of this trio of blood mages, claws at his own face tearing at the skin while his whole form twists and bubbles at the limbs into a grotesque mutilation of his form. "Abomination," Alistair hisses in anger while plunging his sword, now smoking white due to his Templar-given abilities, deep into the chest of the man before his ill-wrought transformation could truly take hold.

I turn about at the sound of what I assume is Sten beating the last man to death, when a sight at the far end of the room takes the breath from my lungs. A human of such small stature that she must be merely a girl, is laid out on a pedestal carved of stone. She's been bathed in blood, so much blood that her dark tresses are matted to her skull and shoulder with her sparse clothes like a second skin to her bony frame. Her wide-set eyes, so unusually sharply angled and almond in shape, seem to be looking _through _me rather than _at_ me with her head turned in our direction on the stone. I frown bitterly, convinced that she's as dead as all the other poor souls we've seen as victims to these sickening blood mages, until those dark chocolate orbs seemingly do the impossible and _blink_. I swipe my dagger from the floor, and return my blades to their scabbards while I run to her in a rush of feeling overcome with desperation in a will to save at least _one _person from these horrors. I slide in gore beside the stone she's laid on and watch while she weakly turns her head to gaze up at me with glassy, reddened eyes that hold so much fear and so much pain that I can't help the sympathy that pierces at my heart in sorrow for her. This close to her though, I can see that she's not a girl, but simply unusually small for a human woman with maturity etching her soft features. Something changes in her expression, and I'm helpless to look on while that pain and fear, though it doesn't completely dissipate, is replaced by a look of inquisitive awe. She raises one hand drenched in blood, blood not her own for I've yet to see a wound on her person, so slowly that I'm not even certain she's conscious of the act. I'm helplessly still with the clenching of my heart in agony for her predicament while her fingers, far too cold and slick, trace along my jaw in a gesture of reverence before that hand falls slack against her side.

"You're safe," I tell her with my tone purposefully soft, though I can't help the roughening of my voice at the raw emotion I'm struggling to keep in check. There's been so many I couldn't save, so many I've lost, that I silently vow to the Maker and Andraste that I will keep this woman from sharing their fate. She seems so frightened, so lost, so tortured, that I want nothing more to whisk her away from this place. I hesitate to do so, though I feel my fingers flex against the palms of my hands in an effort to still myself. I don't know what she's suffered, and I don't know what seems to be continuing to give her pain. She's too covered in blood, and yet I cannot see any wounds upon her flesh. "We're Grey Wardens," I finally breathe and watch as her eyes fixate themselves on the contours of my mouth in the wake of my few uttered words, "and we can help you."


End file.
